Forensic Files

A young mother is murdered after years of domestic abuse. There are clues at the scene: bloody footprints and DNA from the victim's rape kit. But the evidence that will conclusively tie the killer to the crime is on a freshly-baked hamburger bun.

Threatening emails, a missing person and an abandoned truck lead police to a home where they believe a murder was committed. The evidence is overwhelming and investigators are sure they have the killer. What they don't have is the body of the victim.

It appeared the victim had accidentally fallen and hit her head at the bottom of the stairs. But the odd position of her shoes and the absence of blood spatter led police to suspect the scene had been staged… and Luminol proved they were right.

As she left choir practice, the woman was gunned down in the church parking lot. Her husband became the prime suspect â€" particularly when police learned he found out just a month earlier that his wife had been cheating on him for three years.

The truck fell off of the hydraulic jack, crushed the man working beneath it, and sparked a fire or so it seemed. Investigators turned to forensic science to determine if they were dealing with a tragic accident or a carefully orchestrated murder.

When their trailer catches fire, the young husband heroically rescues his wife and infant son. A month later, his wife is beaten to death in a bedroom of his parents' home. The cut window screen points to an intruder, but the lack of supporting evidence compels investigators to look beyond the obvious.

The man suffered a slow, agonizing death over a period of days. His wife maintained he killed himself but police were skeptical… especially when they learned her first husband died when he was only 38-years-old and she refused to consent to an autopsy.

The "Last Call Killer" targeted men in gay bars who drank heavily. After killing and dismembering them, he carefully washed away the evidence. He eluded capture for almost ten years, until new technology revealed fingerprints no one knew were there.

The victim was brutally murdered. Police learn her fiancé was having affairs with other women, and he becomes the prime suspect, that is until a man comes forward who not only believes he owns the murder weapon, he also knows who used it.

When a teenaged girl goes missing, no one knows if she ran away or if she was the victim of foul play. Everyone's worst fears are confirmed when a body is found at the bottom of an isolated ravine. Police scour the crime scene, hoping to find enough evidence to identify the killer.

The bodies of three women were found floating in Tampa Bay. The water washed away any evidence, but police hoped a handwritten note found in the victims' car would lead to the killer, so they posted huge copies of the note on five highway billboards.

Four young adults are brutally murdered in an affluent Texas neighborhood, and the crime scene yields little evidence. The next-door neighbors see two young people dressed in black walking nearby, and forensic experts use their descriptions to create composite drawings which become a key element in solving the crime.

A young college student is found dead in her apartment. There are no obvious signs of foul play, but skin cells under her fingernails yield DNA of an unknown male suspect, and petechial hemorrhages in her eyes prove this is a homicide.

Twenty-four hours after her face-to-face meeting with a man she met online, the woman and her soon-to-be ex-husband were shot to death. Only the computer had been taken from her home, and with it, the means to identify the killer.

A woman is murdered on a jogging trail in the middle of the day. The leads from cell phone records and search dogs go nowhere. Nine days later, a witness tells police about a chance encounter, and cigarette butts which may contain the killer's DNA.

When a real estate developer is shot to death, his wife becomes the prime suspect. Police have a wealth of evidence against her, but it's circumstantial. The case will turn on a .25 caliber bullet fired 20 years ago from the now-missing murder weapon.

The victim was discovered in a landfill, stuffed into a suitcase. She resembled another woman, missing for 18 months. Sure they were dealing with a serial killer, police faced the daunting task of combing through 225,000 tons of trash to find her body.

A woman going through a bitter divorce is reported missing the morning after 9/11. Investigators are frustrated until a suspect makes a verbal mistake.

The woman was missing for a month. Police find her car but no evidence of foul play… only a fingerprint and a set of keys. There's a code on one of they keys, which they hope will unlock not only a door, but also the mystery of her disappearance.

A funeral director is murdered and his son, the sole beneficiary of his estate, is considered a likely suspect… until witnesses provide him with an ironclad alibi. When police find a mask near the crime scene, they hope it will lead to the killer.

The killer was meticulous, washing everything at the scene, including the victim's body. The only definitive evidence was a single hair. Three years later he struck again and, this time, what he left behind would prove he committed both crimes.